


You're not a voice (and you can't save me)

by revoleotion



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Armitage is a teacher, Based on Into the Unknown, Brendol Hux still sucks, Canon-Typical Violence, Gingerpilot, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kylo Ren is not sympathetic, M/M, Phasma Lives, Set after episode 8, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22464307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revoleotion/pseuds/revoleotion
Summary: The message is fairly easy to decode but Armitage already knows what it says before he takes a closer look at the Latin alphabet. Three letters. The line is finished off with a question mark that looks like a human back with scoliosis and a lot less beautiful than it does in aurebesh.As cracky as it sounds but also really angsty, like everything I do. Armitage Hux isn't even sure why exactly Poe Dameron keeps spamming him messages to make him switch over to the resistance but he knows that he's slowly going insane over it.(this is an indirect sequel to "you must not like hugs, then" but I explain everything in here again)
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux & Phasma, Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux
Comments: 32
Kudos: 125





	1. with an X

The message is fairly easy to decode but Armitage already knows what it says before he takes a closer look at the Latin alphabet. Three letters. The line is finished off with a question mark that looks like a human back with scoliosis and a lot less beautiful than it does in aurebesh. 

The message says, “ **NOW?** ”. The last four messages have said the exact same, to the point of Armitage feeling a strong hate towards those three letters in particular. He ignores the urge to smash the holopad against the closest wall, he can’t do that. He promised to keep that frequency open for important messages,  _ important _ , not something that could either be an invitation for a date, a death threat or (even worse) a suggestion to switch sides. 

And it’s exactly that. 

This both worries and disgusts Armitage. He grew up as the son of an Imperial officer, grew up watching the First Order rise. Rae Sloane has promised him that he was born to do great things, and when Armitage watched three planets crumble because of  _ his  _ orders he knew what she had meant. His words filled large screens in the entire galaxy. His face (including the hat that turned out to be a questionable fashion choice) became a symbol for an organisation that will rule the galaxy one day. 

And yet Poe Dameron took a good look at Armitage and deemed it necessary to spam him with messages. If Armitage could delete anything from his and other people’s memory, he would pick the day he captured Poe and forced him to reveal the truth about his mother. 

Not only did Poe not know a  _ thing _ , he called General Organa who shattered thirty years of childish misbelief. To be fair, it had been foolish of him to think that his mother was still alive. Still, this conversation not only destroyed something within Armitage, it also had a butterfly effect on his entire life. Starting with Poe Dameron asking him to join the resistance. 

As if the Hosnian system doesn’t speak for itself - in all the ways a vanished system can still speak. 

Armitage takes a deep breath, deletes the message, deletes his datapad’s search history, deletes every data in the Star Destroyer’s network, and scans the holopad for a virus, just to be sure. Once he’s done, he notices someone staring at him like he has just lost his mind. 

“Who is it?” Captain Phasma asks. 

Armitage turns to her and slowly puts the tablet down. 

“The threat,” she adds with a hint of impatience in her voice. Sometimes, she falls back into her old accent if she’s fed up enough. Today, she’s on edge but not close enough. Armitage never learnt any other accent than the clipped First Order one, and while he has made an effort to study languages, he knows the accent haunts him like an unforgiving ghost. Not unlike his father, so to say. 

“Did you receive a death threat, Armitage?” Phasma asks, her voice now free of any emotion. The name is just another hint that not everyone in this ship will understand. When Captain Phasma asks something in this tone and with this name, she expects an honest answer. In their relationship that is in no way romantic (due to them agreeing on not fancying their respective gender) and also not quite a friendship, loyalty and trust keep them from murdering each other in their sleep. 

“I did not,” Armitage answers. “The resistance thinks I might join their cause.”

He knows she’s frowning behind her helmet. He would do the same if his face wasn’t visible to anyone. 

“I will wait. If it gets unbearable…”

He doesn’t have to finish that sentence. Phasma nods, types in something into her datapad and turns away. 

And no matter how many times the feeling catches Armitage unprepared, he will never get used to the itch in his stomach he might call happiness one day. 

History classes are a safe thing to teach until they reach the one unit Armitage hates with enough passion for Kylo Ren to pick up. He knows that Ren knows because the man stands right in front of the classroom, one hand on his lightsaber. This may be a threat or Ren actually intends on using it, Armitage can’t tell. 

“What is it, Supreme Leader?” Armitage asks and makes a point of avoiding to look at the man’s face while he unlocks the classroom and enters it. Ren follows him, takes the lightsaber from his belt and slams it onto the desk. Armitage makes yet another point, this time of not flinching, even though his muscles beg him to fight or flight. 

“I feel your hatred,” Ren says. “So, I should be the one asking that question.”

Armitage presses his palms against each other and rests his index fingers against his lips. That way, he can hide how his lips are twitching with laughter. The years of freedom, four years, to be exact, made it exhausting to feel scared when the whole patricide thing is brought up. By now, Armitage is amused by it. That’s better than utter despair, anyway. If Armitage paused for five seconds and thought about his current situation, he’d either break something or break down himself. 

“My students will arrive in a couple of minutes. I will teach them about late generals of the First Order-”

Sometimes, Armitage imagines a tiny light bulb above Kylo Ren’s head. It’s not lit most of the time but it flickers with an insight now. 

“I understand,” Ren says (he doesn’t), turns around and struts out of the room. Armitage opens his mouth but the lightsaber already flies back to the man like it’s connected to his hips. 

He doesn’t have time to think about Ren’s intentions because his holopad vibrates with yet another message. Right when Armitage wants to read it, the first trooper enters the room, greets him and sits down on their seat. 

A part of Armitage’s brain knows that this stormtrooper will probably die on the first battlefield they join. Ren doesn’t utilize troopers as much as Armitage would, he only uses them if he plans to use them as cannon fodder. It’s likely that Armitage would be upset about this if he wasn’t that eager to hide his real traits from everyone he comes close to. 

HK-3573 is a quiet human with dark skin and violet eyes, indicating that their vision isn’t limited to what Armitage can see. When they first appeared in his classes, they politely told him to refer to them as “they” which he did. As much as the galaxy wants to believe it, the First Order isn’t as un-progressive as the Imperium was. At least when it comes to humans. 

And, that’s his favorite aspect, heritage doesn’t count. Armitage’s family couldn’t matter less in this environment, but he’s slightly concerned with the way Kylo Ren obsesses over a bloodline. He should probably call him Supreme Leader Ren in his head; he’s known to take sneak peeks into Armitage’s brain like it’s a public domain. 

But “Supreme Leader Hux” sounded so much better in his head when he practiced it in front of a mirror. He had done this one time, right after picking up Ren’s unconscious self who had just been defeated by the girl. Since then,  _ the girl _ has grown to be a threat to Armitage’s beloved Order, especially when she killed the Supreme Leader Snoke. (Which, of course, she didn’t. Armitage call detect a lie of he sees one.)

To Armitage’s own surprise, he does not hate Rey. It’s difficult to hate someone who kicked Kylo Ren’s ass, not once but twice and who escaped him even more often. Sadly, ever since Snoke died, a failure on Ren’s side means an extraordinary amount of pain for Armitage. 

The classroom quickly fills up with students until the last one closes the door behind them. Armitage looks around the familiar faces and wonders how he can’t be prepared for what comes next. He considers himself to be the best actor he knows, after all he managed to grief about his father’s death for more than half an hour. 

“Today, we will talk about former First Order generals.”

Any other teacher doesn’t mean the “talking” part literally but Armitage has figured that animating the students to participate in his classes makes them a) trust him more and b) remember the material because they can and will be forced to talk. He also utilizes this method for his own sanity. He positions himself next to the desk, facing the class, and projects an image to the blackboard. 

“Now,” he says because he has figured that he could get the worst out of the way first, “Who is that? There are no wrong answers.”

Another handy trick because, of course, there are wrong answers, and every year someone demonstrates this. 

“He looks like you, Sir,” a student says. Armitage would never treat a child with something other than respect but it’s hard to keep himself together if this happens. 

“That’s Brendol Hux, his father,” another trooper throws in, someone who read the text Armitage put up onto the network yesterday morning or just someone who connected the dots. Armitage, once again, wonders why he volunteered to do this. 

“Correct,” he forces himself to say. “Anything else?”   
He watches his students as they throw in the bits of knowledge they gained from the Force knows where, only correcting some parts of it. When he moves on to the next person, relief washes over his body. He keeps up a slight smile until everyone has left, then he leans against the desk and slides down until he sits on the floor. 

_ He looks like you, Sir. _

To distract himself, and to avoid spiraling down into a mental state he can’t get out easily, he reaches for his datapad and reads the message from earlier. This time it’s longer but Armitage doesn’t need long to figure out what it says. The more he gets to see of this alphabet, the easier it becomes, to the point where he could probably type it effortlessly. 

“ **I KNOW YOU ARE GETTING MY MESSAGES, HUGS.** ”

Oh, how the tables have turned on this one. Armitage feels the urge to laugh about this situation; how he’s been saved by a childish message. Even worse, he wants to correct the man on the spelling of his name so  _ badly _ that he almost replies. 

Poe can never know this, he thinks, and deletes every trace of the conversation. Deep cleaning the datapad gets exhausting but Armitage knows that his mental tiredness hardly comes from pressing a few buttons. If he was nicer to himself, he’d take a break. 

But the only way to get him to do that is a direct order from his superiors or a long stare from Captain Phasma. Armitage gets up, packs his things and checks his schedule. There’s a meeting in a couple of minutes, one of those board meetings Kylo Ren has started the second he made himself Supreme Leader. It’s one of the few changes Armitage doesn’t fully hate. Despite his God complex, Ren has gotten rid of the throne tradition. When there’s something to report, Ren accepts messages or meetings. 

Never in his own quarters but in meeting rooms with long tables and caff makers. Of course, Armitage doesn’t trust the caff Ren serves them but that’s another story. 

When he reaches the room, there’s a man waiting in front of it already. Ever since he first shook hands with Enric Pryde, Armitage has decided not to trust the man. He’s a fairly handsome, older man who now owns the made-up title “Allegiant General” that Ren only invented to push Armitage down into insignificance. It still feels like falling, to be honest. Armitage isn’t ready for the moment he finally hits the ground. 

“Hello,” Armitage says because he knows Pryde will offended if he doesn’t greet him. Nevertheless, he never returns that greeting. 

Pryde is the relic of a time where Armitage has felt even less powerful than he does now. Four years aren’t a long time compared to 30 years of abuse, and Pryde loves reminding him of a time where Brendol Hux was still alive. It’s usually subtle but sometimes Armitage feels so sick to the stomach that he can’t follow the meeting. 

They enter the room shortly after and Armitage makes sure to choose a seat the furthest away from Pryde as possible. 

“Your father would be embarrassed,” Pryde mutters under his breath when he sits down. It’s up to Armitage to interpret what exactly Brendol would be embarrassed about but the mention of his father is enough for Armitage. He stares at the table and keeps his eyes there, even when Kylo Ren enters the room and starts the meeting. For someone who once was a part of the triumvirate leading the Starkiller Base, he’s now reduced to a nobody. And Ren seems to like it. Armitage feels his eyes on him a few times during that meeting but since he doesn’t react to it, Ren doesn’t say anything. 

When Armitage finally returns to his room, it’s late and everything he hears and feels is too loud or too much. He sits down on his bed and places the holopad on his knees. There are no urgent messages, just a reminder that his next shift starts in six hours. 

With a sigh, Armitage changes into his sleepwear, makes sure that the door is locked and lets himself fall onto the bed, just centimeters next to the datapad. He turns onto his belly, pulls the device closer and starts typing. 

“ **IT’S HUX, WITH AN X.** ”

He stares at the message for a long time until he is sure that there are no mistakes. He dislikes the punctuation of this alphabet but he has gotten it right. After making sure he is on the right frequency, he sends the message and pushes the datapad away from him. 

He might regret this. 

But nothing can be as bad as his situation in here. 


	2. more of a triangle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm blown away by the positive feedback on the first chapter! Us gingerpilot fans are just really, really needy for content, aren't we?  
> I'm not sure how to phrase the warning for this chapter, there is no graphic description of anything but there's mention of past homophobia and past trauma.  
> Enjoy the chapter and stay safe!  
> \- ben

Over the years, Armitage has perfected the technique of waking up right before his alarm. He allows himself to close his eyes again and imagine all the things he can never think in front of Kylo Ren; him being happy about his father’s death, him being Supreme Leader, him having a cat. Him pointing a blaster at Pryde, smiling and pulling the trigger. 

The alarm replaces the fantasies with the most annoying sound Armitage could find when setting it up. He opens his eyes, groans quietly and leans over to turn it off. In the pitch black room, the light of the tablet almost blinds him. Armitage curses, reaches for the light switch at his bed and blinks a number of times before he can see again. 

Thankfully, that was only the first alarm. There’s a second one to remind him that he has to leave _immediately_. 

The First Order has maximized the potential of everyone working for it which means that Armitage gets exactly the amount of sleep he needs for his body to keep on functioning. Because Kylo Ren wants him at his side at all times, Armitage doesn’t have a lot of room to escape him. One could say he’s a dog on a leash (and he’s pretty sure that this is one of the insults his enemies use when they don’t call him a weasel). Ren knows where he is at all times. Ren likes to think that he knows every thought that crosses Armitage’s mind. If it weren’t for Phasma, Armitage would accept Poe’s offer immediately, if only to spite Ren. 

No, that’s not fair. It’s not fair towards Rae who taught him to fight. It’s not fair towards the aspirations Armitage has had in himself ever since he was small. He can’t throw that away just because he feels… what? Treated badly? Like his childhood hadn’t been a sequence of him being treated badly by every friend of his father he met. 

And he survived that. 

The holopad has a new message for him but Armitage doesn’t allow himself to read it yet. Fueled by curiosity, he gets ready for the day, clips the blaster to his belt and picks up the datapad again. 

He shouldn't look, not before work. What will make him spiral more, ignoring the message or reading it? Knowing what Poe thought of now or having to face his day with no distractions?

“ **I DON’T LIKE THE LETTER IN THAT ALPHABET. USUALLY IT’S MORE OF A TRIANGLE AND THEREFORE THE EXACT SHAPE OF YOUR TORSO. NOW, IT’S LIKE SOMEONE CROSSED OUT A MISTAKE THE UNIVERSE MADE. DON’T MIND THE MELANCHOLY, IT’S LATE. HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND YET?** ”

… a triangle. Armitage blinks. This is a distraction, that’s for sure. It’s the first message he wants to keep. The lines scream Poe’s name at him; he can imagine how the man sits on his bed at the resistance base and types the message. And while every part of this was designed to make Armitage furious, the part about melancholy confuses him. Ah yes, their shared moments make for wonderful memories. There was the time Poe broke into Starkiller Base and threw Phasma into the trash compactor - which technically isn’t _Armitage’s_ memory but he heard her screaming during a nightmare once. Then, there’s the time Poe “tooled with” him. Lastly, Armitage capturing Poe and asking him what he knew about his mother. Moments that induce melancholy, indeed. Almost romantic. 

Armitage stares at the words until he memorized them, then he deletes it and deep cleans the entire holopad. When his second alarm reminds him to go, he leaves the room and walks to the breakfast area. Phasma already sits on her reserved seat and sips from her cup. She eats liquid breakfast, so she can sit with Armitage. It’s nice of her although he wouldn’t drink the liquid food the First Order serves even if he was starving. To be fair, there isn’t a lot of food he trusts, First Order food or not. 

“Good morning,” Armitage says to Phasma who only nods at him. Ever since she survived the explosion on board of the _Supremacy_ , she talks even less than usual. Armitage has seen the scars on her face, the patches of hair that survived the hungry fire. It took her a week before she could walk again and not even bacta could fix her skin. He has never cared how she looked like but he knows that some inner scars are harder to fix than physical ones. 

There used to be a time where Kylo Ren joined them in the morning. Three sleep deprived young adults at one table, joking about battles they almost didn’t win. This was a time before Ren met Rey from Jakku. And a time before Poe started spamming Armitage with messages.   
Would Phasma hate him for answering them? He can never tell how loyal she is to the First Order. He quickly learnt that they share a sense for survival that Kylo Ren will never understand. But unlike Phasma who only betrayed the First Order with a gun to her head, who still wakes up screaming because she imagines the noise of the trash compactor slowly crushing her ribs, Armitage did it to get a break from humiliation. 

He finishes breakfast in silence and gets up to start his shift. It’s not as emotionally draining as today, him and Phasma go through the files of every trooper they found “dangerous” or “suspicious”. There has been a time where Brendol Hux asked Armitage to do this. More specifically, he wanted Armitage to report any trooper who might not be straight or cisgender. Obviously, Armitage has not done that. He made sure that nobody could ever have any suspicions about him and Phasma, and they even pretended to be caught on dates to maintain the facade. 

For a reason that Armitage hasn’t figured out yet… it worked. Poe was the only one to figure out he was not straight. Maybe Pryde knows and that fills Armitage with more dread than it should. 

Ever since Brendol died, the life expectancy of a queer trooper skyrocketed. Ren sometimes marks troopers as “suspicious” when he assumes they might be interested in one another. To Armitage, this is the result of not keeping them busy. If he had more than two weekly minutes of free time, he might find a general to date. Just to spite Ren, of course. Now, that Ren treats the stormtroopers as Armitage’s “secret” and useless army, they don’t exactly act up, they just start to feel useless too. 

Armitage takes his time to look through the files, even though he knows all of those troopers by heart. Back then, he defended FN-2187 in front of Ren and Snoke, just to have this traitor threatening Phasma, blowing up the Starkiller Base, sneaking onto the _Supremacy_ and kicking Phasma into an explosion. FN-2187 and Cardinal are the two most dangerous troopers he had to watch escape. So, it makes sense that they make sure it doesn’t happen again. After replying to Poe’s messages, Armitage should throw his own file in there and have Phasma analyse it. Would he accept it if she decided to kill him? Probably. He should ask her to kill him if he ever seriously planned to defect. 

“I found your teacher’s pet,” Phasma says quietly and faces her datapad towards him. Armitage squints at the picture of HK-3573 and looks back to Phasma. 

“My what?” he asks. 

“You spent two days practicing those pronouns. What else do you call that?”

“Respect?” he asks back. 

“For a _trooper_.”

“You’re just a special edition trooper and I respect you too,” he replies deadpan. 

Phasma doesn’t answer that. It was a little rougher than his usual tone, and Armitage made sure that everyone who made fun of his past got shot into the face. He already wishes this day to end and he isn’t even halfway through it. 

“Actually,” he says. “You aren’t. You’re a Captain and I appreciate to have you around.”

Despite not being able to convey emotions with the helmet, Phasma looks like he has just suggested to smoke spice with her. 

“Thank you?” she asks. 

“You are welcome.”

He needs to have this security cam footage deleted before Ren or Pryde get to it. They only are alive because Ren doesn’t want them dead yet. He can’t risk having anyone know how affectionate they are with each other. 

They finish the work without saying anything else. Phasma doesn’t like to speak more than she has to and Armitage has lost the ability to think of speeches. It’s not like anyone is going to listen to them anytime soon. 

He is not allowed to look at the security footage anymore. Enric Pryde tells him in person, a little smile on his face. Armitage does his best to hide his frustration when he nods, turns away and starts walking. 

“I appreciate to have you around,” Pryde calls after him, turning the blood in Armitage’s veins to ice and making his heart stop for a second. When he finds a refresher to hide in, he can’t catch his breath and his legs don’t carry him. He sits down next to the sink, leans against the wall and pulls out the datapad. He needs to distract himself. He needs to talk to someone whose life he can’t endanger (and if he did, he mustn’t care for it). 

“ **I DID NOT TAKE YOU FOR SOMEONE INVESTED IN LINGUISTICS.** ”

He counts to ten before he sends the message. The usual routine of deleting his data gets a little quicker every time he does it. He puts the datapad down and rests his head on his knees. If he doesn’t get up now, Ren will look for him. If he doesn’t get up now, this will draw attention to him and eventually to Phasma. If he does not function correctly, they will get rid of him. This can’t happen. This can never happen. 

Armitage gets up and takes on his next shift. Because Ren refuses to do desk work, he assigned the calculating and strategic tasks to Armitage. It’s mostly simple things, small enough not to cause any harm if they are manipulated. Armitage can’t think of any more degrading work than deciding on the quantities of toilet paper but at least this is something he can’t possibly do wrong. When he had to do this as an aspiring general, he has thought of speeches and ways to sneak alcohol from his father’s room. He has used this boring work as an opportunity to use his brain. 

He can’t think when Ren is around. Ren is inside his brain, he collects his weak points and his hidden secrets. And one day he will use all of that against Armitage, just like Armitage would’ve done if he was in the same situation. With every day that passes, he regrets not having shot Ren when he had the chance. 

Many barely necessary calculations later, he is allowed to leave. According to Armitage’s schedule, he’s supposed to have dinner now and go to sleep. After that terrible day, he doesn’t feel like ignoring any other order, so he grabs his food, finishes as quickly as possible and hurries to his room. He feels _done_ with everything. He hates Pryde, he hates being trapped in his own head, he hates that everything he wanted was given to someone who never really wanted it. 

Every single one of his steps, of his words, is being watched. He wants to scream but the thought of Pryde watching him is enough to stop him. 

The one thing the cameras and microphones can’t catch is what happens on his screens. Still, he makes sure his back is covering it when he turns on his datapad and checks for new messages. He takes a little longer to decipher the code this time but once he’s done, a hysterical giggle begs to escape his throat. 

“ **I’M NOT. YOU ARE AVOIDING MY QUESTION.** ”

It’s Poe. It screams Poe’s name. It’s really him. Armitage bites his tongue and starts typing. 

“ **I WILL NOT JOIN YOU.** ”

This is the first real time conversation and Armitage can’t help but wonder what Poe is doing right now. It might be daytime where he is, maybe FN-2187 and Rey are huddled around the datapad and tell him what to write. Armitage wants to believe that he’s alone, waiting for coded words to appear. 

“ **THEN TELL ME, WOULD YOU RATHER BE A TRIANGLE OR THE UNIVERSE’S MISTAKE?** ”

The question mark again. Armitage looks at the squiggly line and wonders what culture used this alphabet. It’s a dead but not extinguished form of communication, that’s the crucial point. Armitage found it first but Poe didn’t take long to learn it. He can’t bring himself to answer, not after something this personal. 

What Armitage wants to write is “I think you already know that I am a bastard” but he can’t. Poe already knows more than he should. 

He has four hours left to sleep before his alarm will wake him up. Armitage puts the tablet down, turns onto his back and tries to remember a time where things looked hopeful. Poe has a point, though. The “Xesh” in aurebesh is a little prettier than the X he has to type when writing a message for Poe. 


	3. memories and

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told myself not to write or publish chapters when intoxicated, yet here we are. No warnings for this chapter as far as I can tell. It's a little filler because I didn't finish the next scene yet but... please stay with me. It will get better.   
> \- ben

The memories of Arkanis are buried so deep in his brain that he first thinks of them as a dream when he wakes up. Armitage looks into the darkness and forces himself to remember. Bullying has always been a part of his life, it comes naturally when you’re small and skinny and your hair is red and you flinch away from every single touch. Nobody dared to insult him and nobody hit him either because what scares people off more than the canvas of his skin already being painted red whenever he showed up for classes? Still, a majority of Armitage’s life has been lonely before he met Phasma. It’s hard to grow up being different and not to see himself in the faces of his peers. 

Peers turned into sadistic stormtrooper soldiers that had been selected for Brendol’s secret programs, then Armitage lost the contact to everyone his age. Almost every single officer in the early First Order was old, male and a fanatic supporter of the Empire. If Armitage had to count how many of these old men he has gotten rid of over the years, he’d miss his second alarm. There were many of them and they had enjoyed abusing him like it was a standardized test. The final exam that followed the “how to be a bad First Order officer” handbook. 

An easy way to deal with things before Armitage knew murder was an option, was silence. He turned into a quiet version of himself that could count the words he used during the day on one hand. 

When Armitage gets ready, he wonders how he turned into this person again. He has always loved to speak. Part of having a very smart, very verbal brain is feeling like exploding any second. Armitage wrote speeches like he was the Arkanis version of Alexander Hamilton (who he discovered in a database but he cannot tell if he was real or a character in a musical or both), he imagined how to solve issues of the galaxy and how it would feel like to rule. 

Apparently, he needs to go back to that. The only difference is that he will not make up any ambitious plans for himself anymore, he will make sure to fix his mistakes from the day before. 

Starting with ignoring the new message he got from Poe. Not only does he ignore it, he deletes it without having looked at it. It leaves him with a emptiness in his stomach, with the lingering longing to find out what what he is missing. 

Breakfast is quiet, with Phasma and him avoiding to look at each other. Ren is nowhere to be found, neither is Pryde. Armitage doesn’t want to be scared of what they might plan without him. 

Before Pryde, it has just been him and Ren. They were equals, they were bitter, and they hadn’t missed an opportunity to insult each other. Now that Ren is the Supreme Leader, he ignores Armitage. It’s not like Armitage needs to be praised at all times but sometimes he even misses Snoke’s cold, “Good” he heard whenever he made a breakthrough with tactics. Ren doesn’t do this. He doesn’t even trust Armitage. 

If he asked Phasma, she’d comfort him in the only way she can; distant worry and an occasional hand on his arm or his shoulder. But Armitage doesn’t want Phasma’s praise, he doesn’t even want Ren’s praise. What he wants, more than anything, is not being disposed of like the useless garbage his father called him all his life. 

Phasma gets up and cleans their table once she finished her meal. Armitage tries to help her but she puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back onto his chair. He doesn’t let anyone touch him, especially not any grown men. When Phasma does those little gestures, he feels his legs giving up. He needs a few seconds to catch his breath, seconds that Phasma uses to her advantage. When Armitage stands up again, she has cleaned the table and walked away to her first task. 

As for Armitage, he has to do yet another unpleasant thing Ren has assigned to him. He has to sit in front of a radar and watch out for any signals from the resistance. It’s a little iconic because Armitage is getting signals from the resistance’s own Poe Dameron himself, but sitting around and waiting is a safe task for him. Phasma is somewhere else today; Armitage suspects that Ren doesn’t want him and her to work together if he can avoid it. 

It’s not a secret that Ren would’ve been relieved over Phasma’s death. 

This has filled Armitage with rage at first. With pure, dark rage, the same color as the blood on the floor when Snoke slammed him onto the ground. It's how Armitage grew to see the emotion inside his head, and it fits the feeling he got when realizing Ren wants Phasma dead. Of course, he wants Armitage dead too. He wants the remains of the Starkiller Base triumvirate to become a lost memory. He doesn't have many friends in the First Order. The older men see a bad copy of his father, the younger ones see an opportunity to take Armitage's place if he's gone. 

_ We can fix the republic's mistakes, we can start new. We will create a system where everybody is equal and everyone- _

No, he has to start that speech again. Nobody is equal while Ren keeps neglecting the army and hides his hunger for power behind board meetings. And sure, troopers will never have the same worth a general (or  _ allegiant general _ ) has but Armitage knows they are happy to have a purpose in life. That’s the First Order he wants. People finding joy in their work and never having to face the same fear Armitage has felt. The First Order shouldn’t be about where you are coming from, it should be about who you can become. 

A long week of boring tasks later, Armitage stumbles into his room and collapses on his bed. His datapad beeps with the reminder to eat dinner but Armitage mutes it and closes his eyes. He allows himself to stay like this for two minutes, then he opens his eyes again, changes into his nightwear and selects the new messages from Poe to delete them. Right before he can do so, he notices that the last file isn’t a message. It’s a video. 

Armitage feels both intimidated and amused. How much spy software can you fit into one of those? It’s unusual for him to be curious still. It’s a trait he doesn’t allow himself to show. 

He downloads the video, makes sure to check for spyware, then he locks the file behind three passwords and his fingerprint. He doesn’t dare to watch it because it would make the hole in his chest feel bigger. He wants his mind to work again, how it worked when he was still useful. When he knew how to collect the broken pieces of his plans after a fallback. There had been a time where Armitage would get up again, no matter what. Something took it away from him, and he’s almost sure that this something is called “Enric”. 

He has four hours left to sleep but he doesn’t use them for that. He stares up to the ceiling, halfway trapped in memories and wonders if Pryde and Kylo ever look at the surveillance recordings of Armitage’s room. Just to be sure, he slowly raises his arm, the middle finger facing the camera. He doesn’t think anything for four hours.

When his alarm wakes him up from a dream he didn’t have, he gets up, prepares himself for the day and sits down on his bed again. The dark walls, the blinding lights in his eyes, a headache forming inside his head. Armitage squeezes his eyes shut until the second alarm makes him jump. 

Not a good day. Which is potentially dangerous. 

Phasma gets an alarm whenever he is in distress. Four years before Starkiller Base, the day Armitage got his freedom, she asked him if she should turn off those alarms. He had denied that offer, knowing that some pain is never truly gone. And at first, it really wasn't. He woke up screaming every night, then every week and eventually only every month. Then, he went so many nights without being afraid that he stopped counting. 

Phasma always knew. She only reacted if she had to but it is comforting that Armitage can never just disappear without her knowing. 

This kind of disappearing is something different. He isn’t distressed, he isn’t in pain. He slowly disappears inside his own head, and not even in there he is safe. 

His normal schedule got overridden by the urgent request at a interrogation cell. Armitage’s sleep deprived brain makes up three scenarios of him getting murdered in the most brutal way possible. But what kind of a sick spiel is it to call him to assist at his own interrogation?

Still, Armitage isn’t as calm as he’d like to be as he walks down to the secret interrogation floor on the deeper floors. While there is no surveillance on these floors officially, it’s foolish to believe that nobody knows about them. Armitage knows exactly what Cardinal did on the day he tried to kill Phasma. Ever since then, Armitage made sure that people feel safe in here but definitely aren’t. In hindsight, he could’ve used the loophole for himself too but, no, now everyone with access to surveillance footage will know what happens in here. And Armitage isn’t even one of those people anymore. 

He stops at the room and considers not entering. He’s not ready to die (to be fair, he’s never been ready to die). So, when the door opens and someone pulls him into the room, he kicks them with every bit of strength he has. It’s not much, he quickly realizes, but a muffled, “ow” from underneath a helmet stops him. Panting, shivering and on the verge of a panic attack, Armitage stops resisting and looks up to his only friend. 

This can’t be right. This is so far from his usual routine that he wants to escape as quickly as he can. But years ago he promised himself to trust a woman behind a chrome helmet. Whatever Phasma is going to do now, he signed up for this. So, he takes a deep breath, fixes his collar and prepares himself for whatever she has planned for him. 


	4. reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I tagged Kylo as unsympathetic? This chapter may be why. In case you don't know the video I vaguely reference to, this is it!  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch-BEeVtHNg  
> (I think it should come up when searching "General Hux loves you" on YouTube, in case this link doesn't work)  
> Overall, I'm excited to see how this story slowly catches up with the Episode 9 canon... you'll see how this turns out. Have fun reading  
> \- ben

“There is no surveillance in here,” she tells him the second he enters the interrogation room. Wonderful, a loophole that will last about as long as Ren will need to find out that Phasma did, in fact, not interrogate anyone.

But when Armitage turns, there is an unconscious person sitting on a chair, the comfortable torturing chair, meaning that there are ties around their legs and torso but not their arms. It’s a lot like when Armitage captured Poe but this person is not Poe. This is a tool Phasma will get rid of once this is over. Armitage will not feel regret when this happens. He has only ever learnt to care for a few people, strangers are none of them. 

“What do you need?” Armitage asks. 

Phasma takes off her helmet. This is always symbolical. And it’s the most amount of trust she can give a person. Armitage never asked for this, he never wanted her to do this. The fact that she does it, makes him feel… special? It spreads a nauseating feeling that makes him want to smile. Her face has healed a little more, it’s interesting to see the progress. What’s even more interesting to see is that Phasma’s expression isn’t blank. She has rage in her eyes, the same rage that she expressed when she told him about her plans with Brendol. It’s something else to _see_ it, not to just feel it in her voice. 

“Do you want him dead, Armitage?” she asks. 

He stares at her. His thoughts aren’t safe. If he allows himself to feel that absurd happiness inside his skull, Ren will find out. So, he only nods. 

Phasma considers him for a while, then she reaches out for him. Her helmet is pressed against his back when she hugs him. Armitage has always expected her to be the kind of “I will crush your spine” hugger but hugging her is safe and calming. He says this like he has experienced more than two hugs in his life; one from Rae after she beat him during a training and he had a panic attack over it. The first one came from his real mother but the exact memory is lost in his brain. Phasma’s hug is not motherly but it’s a touch that he can’t get enough from. He almost melts into it, chin nestled into her shoulder. 

It will never stop, it will just feel differently. People will go but they will never change, and Brendol’s spot will always be filled in some way. Armitage doesn’t believe he will ever escape this cycle of violence against him. But he has Phasma. And Phasma has a huge blaster. 

“I will now enjoy some time with this lady unless you-” Phasma starts but interrupts herself when Armitage vibrates with laughter. Secrets, so many of them. Happy secrets, who could’ve thought. He escapes the hug and makes sure not to look into her eyes. 

“I need one moment,” he says, pulls out the datapad and types in the passwords protecting Poe’s video. Phasma steps closer, not close enough to touch Armitage but close enough to see the screen. He wonders if he should say something, tell her that this isn’t exactly spam mail anymore but something he looks forward to. A joy in life he doesn’t allow himself to have. 

“ _Armitage! That’s your first name, isn’t it? The General told me_ ,” Poe’s voice yells at them. He’s sitting near a campfire in a fairly vegetated area and Armitage has to stop himself from guessing what planet he might be on. 

“ _Finn and I looked at that speech again and apparently you can edit the file and- stop laughing, I didn’t show him yet!_ ”

FN-2187 briefly appears on-screen, making Phasma flinch until Armitage puts a hand onto her arm. He would probably shoot that man on sight for making his best friend act scared of him but this would ruin every trust Poe has in him. The men laugh for a while, then Poe forces himself to calm down. 

“ _Okay, ready?_ ”

Poe pauses and Armitage whispers a, “no” the man can’t hear. 

What follows next is the worst thing Armitage has seen in his life. Poe has scrambled his words and stitched them back together in a montage that makes Armitage wonder if he can get his brain recalibrated after this. He would pay every single one of his credits to make sure he doesn't remember this. Armitage now tells the entire audience that he loves them, followed by an awkward pause, a single person clapping and then a zoom onto Phasma's emotionless helmet-face. 

“How did he even do this?” Phasma asks who seems a little too amused for Armitage's liking. 

“I know the software he used,” Armitage says, “We use it to enhance surveillance footage.” 

“Is that so?” she asks, honestly surprised. 

And when she steps back and looks at him, he knows what bothers him about this. Phasma isn't angry. He had hoped that she'd stop him from doing this, that she'd tell him, “Everyone you've ever loved is here in the First Order” but she doesn't. Before he can say anything, she snaps into place, face calm and eyes free of amusement. 

“Of course, we have to plan it,” she says. “Don't talk to me unless you have to. Stay alive, that would be enough.” 

“Stay alive,” Armitage repeats. Phasma smiles at him, then she pushes him towards the door. 

“What's her name?” he asks before he leaves the room. Phasma drops the helmet to the ground and runs her fingers through what's left of her hair. 

“She's sunshine,” she says. That's enough for him, he decides. 

He notices mid-shift that he didn't delete the video. Anxiety flushes his cheeks and he counts to ten until he pulls out his datapad and checks for the file. It's still there, of course, protected by his layers of safety. Armitage's finger hovers over the “delete” button and to his horror, tears appear in his eyes when he thinks about having to get rid of this. Sure, the video was the most humiliating thing he has ever been forced to watch. Still, Poe's laughter in his ears is more than he has ever dared to ask for. He can't do it. Phasma might do it for him later, if he remembers asking. For now, he keeps the video, pushes his device deep into his pocket again and concentrates on his work. 

_Stay alive_ , he repeats inside his head. As if it's easy. Then again, it has worked for 35 years, that's a lot, isn't it? Ten years with Phasma, five years without Brendol, a little more than a year with Poe's “Hugs” inside his head. 

“Sir?” a voice asks, making Armitage look up from the controls. A new general, a woman with dark hair and no warmth in her eyes looks at him like she'd love to murder him with her glare. 

“Yes?” Armitage asks back, avoiding to use any title for her. He knows her, the ambition and the urge to push away anything in her way. She wants his position, so badly that she'd murder for it. And while Armitage is also angry about the lack of important women in the First Order, he wouldn't give her even more power than she already has as Pryde's teacher's pet. 

“Your shift ended two and a half standard minutes ago,” she hisses, almost causing him to laugh. “The Supreme Leader wants to see you.” 

Armitage bites back a, “Of course he does” because she wouldn't get it. She takes his seat as he gets up which irritates him enough to stop breathing for a second. 

“Anything else?” she asks like _he_ had been the one interrupting her during her work. Armitage decides to let that go, mostly because sometimes survival means shutting up for one's own sake. 

Kylo Ren waits for him in a room small enough to cause slight claustrophobia. Armitage isn't asked to sit down, so he doesn't. He puts his hands behind his back and looks down on his leader who manages to look both distressed and very satisfied with himself. 

“I finally found it,” he says, not clarifying what _it_ is supposed to be. Armitage suspects it to be something on his ghost-chasing-quest that makes Ren spiral into madness quicker than Armitage could count to three. 

“Sir?” he asks, still, because he needs to find out what Ren called him in for. He has been alone with Ren on multiple occasions, and he can both expect physical and emotional pain. Ren has thrown him around multiple times. Sometimes he passed out when his bones couldn't withstand the pressure of the wall he was smashed into. Sometimes it only hurt so much that he couldn't stop himself from screaming. And then the lightsaber in his face, invisible fingers around his throat and the Force digging through his skull. Being around Ren is far from comfortable. 

“I'm going to need the army and the Allegiant General by my side. We will head out for Mustafar in the morning.” 

It takes Armitage all his years of training not to flinch when he hears this order. _The army_. Not _your army_. And he'd rather take Pryde than someone who has trained those men since birth. 

“Yes, Sir,” Armitage forces himself to answer. 

Ren smiles at him. There is no mask needed to make him look like a monster. If anything, the mask would make him look more controlled than he looks now. Ren is shaking with madness, Armitage realizes. He will either win this war and destroy the galaxy in the process or lose and pull everyone down with him. 

“Another thing? Sign that favorite of yours up for this. I think I'd like to see _them_ die.” 

While not feeling like he belongs anywhere outside the binary perception of gender, Armitage almost feels offended. 

“Sir?” he just asks because that's a nicer way to express his thoughts than saying, “How fucking sexist can you get, Ren?” 

Of course, his Supreme Leader picks up his not very subtle anger, which is good because that way he might miss all the other emotions Armitage suppresses at the moment. 

“I'm not doing this because of _that_ , Hux. I'm doing this because you like them.” 

“I understand,” Armitage says. He does. He knows what Ren intends to do and it works well on him. This trooper doesn't matter as much as Ren thinks they do. They're a part of a class Armitage grew to be proud of but he'd love to see them die in battle if that's what they'd like to die for. What scares him, really scares him, is how easily Ren can get rid of other people Armitage loves. The one other person Armitage dares to love. 

He turns away, walks to the door and prays for his bones to stay in place this time. 

“And, Hux?” Ren asks. 

_No_ , Armitage thinks.

“Yes, Sir?” 

“Join us. You deserve to see.” 

The words crush his lungs with enough intensity to make Armitage wonder why he doesn't die in here, at this exact second. He doesn't turn his head, doesn't let any emotion reach the surface. 

“Of course, my Supreme Leader,” he says and nothing prepares him for the Force to embrace him and spin him around. He stares at Ren, every bit the man that his father created. Out of them both, Armitage is the bigger monster. Ren just doesn't know yet. 

“Look at me,” Ren says like Armitage has the choice not to do that. His ribs almost shatter under the pressure of Ren's embrace. Armitage takes a deep breath and winces when the pressure gets worse. He hears something crack. Pain follows immediately, making his brain swim around in his head and his vision a blurry mess. 

“Don't,” Armitage begs. Ren doesn't seem to hear him. He looks at Armitage like it's the first time he ever sees him. Every love for Kylo Ren shatters deep in Armitage's chest. He can't close his eyes but he can close his mind. 

To his surprise, Ren let's go of him and watches him as his body sinks to the floor. 

“Tomorrow,” he says, turns and leaves Armitage alone with picking himself up.


	5. and you know that if I could

It's too early in the ship's day cycle for anyone to cross Armitage's path when he walks to the hangar. Kylo Ren awaits him, eyes darting around the hall nervously while he watches the troops preparing the ship. Pryde stands at his side, glaring at Armitage with amusement. 

He forces himself to stand up straight. Breathing hurts but the ice he tied to his chest that night could only help as much. He didn't dare to ask for bacta. 

HK-3573 is clever enough not to say anything when they walk over to the generals and their Supreme Leader - but they can’t help a small smile towards Armitage that he doesn’t dare to return. Their helmet is pressed against their chest and once it will shield their face, they will become one with the crowd and lose every hint of individuality. 

“Is that your first mission?” Ren asks them, friendly enough to disgust Armitage. 

“That’s enough,” he says, voice a hoarse echo of what it usually is. Ren turns to him, one finger raised in the motion he is already used to. His throat closes, sealed by the Force, and no matter what he’s trying to say, the sounds die in his chest before air can transmit them. 

Armitage squeezes his eyes shut. Staying alive will be hard because there’s a voice inside his head telling him to punch Ren straight into the face. 

They make it into the shuttle without any other comments from Ren. While the Supreme Leader insists on taking his own TIE fighter, Armitage, Pryde and the stormtroopers board the ship. Armitage doesn't dare to take the pilot seat and Pryde goes as far as nudging him away from it. As gentle as that touch may be, it leaves him breathless. Armitage sinks onto the closest seat, then he remembers something and jumps up again. 

“I will check the uh-” 

“I don't care,” Pryde interrupts him. Armitage nods, goes for the cockpit door and disappears in the hallway. It's a fairly small ship but large enough to carry a battalion of troopers. Armitage checks the doors until he reaches the one he was looking for. 

It opens with a little hiss, and Armitage ignores the helmets of every other trooper, they're not his business. Maybe they should be. Maybe a good person would care for everyone on this ship. Armitage isn't a good person. 

“HK-3573,” he addresses them. 

They look at him, no confusion, only a white helmet. 

“Stay by my side,” he orders. “Don't move away from me, that's an order.” 

They nod. Armitage nods towards the rest of the stormtroopers, then steps back into the hallway and watches the door close. It's not the most elegant solution but it makes him lose some of his tension. He lets himself fall into the chair next to Pryde and smiles at him when he turns his head. 

“A cur with a guard dog,” the older man says. Armitage feels a chill crawling up his spine and injured ribs.

And he wants to say, “Are you talking about Ren or me, Sir?” but he doesn't. He keeps this inside his head, where the image of Poe's smile is locked for all eternity. All the eternity Armitage will have until there's a bullet in his chest and the fire will burn away what's left of him. 

They arrive at Mustafar, a planet he knew for pools of lava until Armitage realized there was more to it. Vader’s castle reaches far up into the air in the background but that’s not what catches his attention first. Armitage looks at Kylo Ren’s silhouette in front of his TIE and wonders if he will ever get over the void that has replaced his feelings for the man. He has loved Ren, there’s no way of denying it. He has loved him, and now he feels that this love has been replaced by fear. Armitage never wanted to be afraid of Kylo Ren the way he was afraid of his father or all the men he has encountered in his life. He hates that he looks at Pryde and Ren and it’s all the same. 

“Raid the area,” Ren yells over to the troopers. He’s already walking towards the castle and no matter how long Armitage stares at him, he can’t recognize the man. He’s running after a ghost, something less real than Armitage, than the First Order, than a organization that took him in and will provide a home for him as long as he’d like. Somehow, everything in Armitage’s world seems less real through the lenses of Kylo Ren’s mania. 

They walk through the landscape without encountering anyone. Pryde stays one step ahead of Armitage and HK-3573 keeps right next to him like he ordered. He can’t use or sense the Force but he knows that Ren is following a voice Armitage can’t hear. They stop at a lake in the middle of the cooled lava, still surrounded by sinister silence. Armitage stops and dares to look into Pryde’s face. The man’s eyes are fixated on Ren, his chin is tilted down and he keeps chewing on the inside of his mouth. When he notices Armitage’s stare, he turns to him and once again Armitage is blown away by how handsome and dangerous Pryde is. They keep looking at each other for half a minute before Armitage turns away. 

Ren has walked to the lake and stopped in front of it. A bad feeling in Armitage’s chest flares up without a warning; before he can move or warn anyone, Ren’s breath picks up speed and the man falls to his knees. Torn apart between helping him and running away as soon as possible, Armitage stares at him but gets distracted by a noise behind him. They aren’t alone - and it shouldn’t surprise him, that’s why Ren brought the army to his expedition. Still, Armitage calls out a, “Ren!” which brings his Supreme Leader back to reality. 

They look at each other, for a tiny moment that deletes the last year from the universe’s memory. In this moment, Armitage isn’t afraid of him. He looks into Ren’s dark eyes and remembers the man that laughed at lunch until his drink came out of his nose. He’s the Ren that apologizes when stumbling over mouse droids. When Armitage blinks, the moment is over. Ren is the Supreme Leader again, and Armitage is a useless little planet on the night sky. 

Ren’s lightsaber whirls through the air and stabs one of the creatures in the head. Armitage can’t tell if it’s human or at least used to be human - but there are more of them and they don’t hold back now. Ren calls the lightsaber back and continues murdering everyone in his path. Pryde does what Armitage would’ve done months, weeks, maybe days ago. He runs. This is not his fight, probably not even his war. Armitage will follow him, in a second, but he has to do something first. 

He turns to HK-3573. 

“Run,” he orders. “I will contact you once th-”

The lightsaber burns through the white armor like lava. HK-3573 gasps and stares at Armitage, their eyes helpless and huge behind the helmet. He steps back, disgusted by his weakness and disgusted by Ren’s pettiness. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers at the stormtrooper. 

They choke on their, “sorry” that barely leaves their lips. They shouldn’t be the one apologizing. Armitage should be sorry for pulling them down with him, he should be the one suffering, not them, not an actual child. When their body sways and fall to the ground, he’s already running. 

He takes his place next to Pryde and watches Ren’s saber cutting through bodies. They pile up next to him, victims on a quest nobody but Ren understands. Armitage looks over to Pryde and prays to see his emotions on the man’s face. He finds nothing. 

And this is the moment Armitage fully realizes that he is trapped. His home turned into something he isn’t. Breathing is hard, his body begs to shut down but Armitage won’t let that happen. He stares at the bodies and imagines himself to be the man who watched three planets burn. 

When did he ever stop being that man in the first place?

His hands tremble when he sends the next message. This isn’t personal, or maybe it’s the most personal message Armitage has ever sent Poe. With this message, he crosses the line. Armitage Hux does something he never would’ve thought he could do. 

He looks at the helmet Phasma left behind before she escaped. 

He’s a spy now. But there are worse things he could be. 


	6. I'd run

What follows, is a disaster in many ways. When Armitage goes to sleep, he hears words he said, words he heard, words dangerous enough to steal his sanity. He’s becoming everything he never wanted to be, and the most terrifying thing is that he doesn't mind. He repeats, “about the mask?” in his head, he repeats Kylo Ren’s orders, he remembers the blank mask staring at him again. The pain in his ribs fades to an itch until it’s gone, another scar in his memory. 

Maybe Kylo Ren already knows it’s him. Either way, he keeps Hux around like he’s a toy, a hobby, something he promised himself to pick up again. It results in Armitage sitting around like a piano collecting dust. He wants Ren’s fingers to itch with the urge to play with him, with the urge to revive something that they used to have. But Ren spirals, obsessed with the girl, and Armitage stays quiet and waits for his secret to bleed out, visible and red. 

He keeps himself alive, somehow, and promises himself that he will see Phasma again. Like a piano keyboard with no cover, he feels himself growing filthy, there’s no telling if there’s dust or dirt on his skin. He never expected to be dirt-free, he just expected the blood to wash away and the scars to fade. He has run all his life, now he’s waiting to be discovered. Armitage always thought he had a couple of cards up his sleeve but his sleeves only reveal that he’s dumped his cards into the burning remains that were his career. This isn’t what Sloane would’ve wanted. 

Phasma has developed the ability to read his mind because he gets an alert with, “enough, Hux” whenever he contemplates getting his fifth mug of caf. It’s only in the middle of a meeting that he realizes that she receives alarms whenever he’s in danger, physically and psychologically. Caffeine included, apparently. 

It’s hard not to break here and now. To start crumbling into a mess, to realize that he loves her, to realize that she’s his best and only friend. He wants her to be alright more than he wants himself to be. Armitage is glad that Ren is not present. The look Pryde gives him is enough. He has hidden his rage for years, he does not intend to start showing it now. So, all he does is looking at Pryde’s forehead because his blue eyes are too much to take in. Armitage disguises his frustration as something simpler. Who allowed the greying hair to look that good, anyway? He is far from asking Pryde about what products he uses; in fact, the thought is so absurd that Armitage wants to laugh now. 

It’s a mess, all of it. 

He’s almost glad when a group of resistance members invade the ship and he finds himself caught up in an even bigger mess. 

“Sir? We caught two of them, do you want to-” 

Armitage isn’t even sure into whose face he’s not looking, he pulls his gloves into position and turns away. If there’s one thing Pryde doesn’t enjoy, it’s brute violence. Like Armitage, he prefers watching. So, when Armitage asks, “Where?”, Pryde doesn’t stop him. 

It’s Dameron. And the defected trooper that pushed Phasma into the explosion but that’s not Armitage’s biggest concern right now. Poe’s standing in front of a row of stormtroopers, troopers that Armitage probably knows by number and possibly nickname. No decision he ever made has felt this difficult. It’s tearing him into pieces. Ren should be the one suffering but Armitage’s decision is already sending out cluster bombs.

“Actually,” he hears himself saying, voice shaking and hands clenched to fists, “I’d like to do this myself.”

The two prisoners shoot sentences at each other like a married couple. And if the situation weren’t that absurd, Armitage would wonder if those two are dating. 

Armitage grabs the first weapon he is offered. More married bickering from Poe and Finn, only interrupted by shots not directed at them. Armitage drops the blaster like he has burnt himself. 

“I’m the spy,” says. For a short, manic moment he wants to repeat it, loud enough for everyone to hear. He wants to walk up to Pryde and say, “I’ve ruined your entire plan, I’ve killed my father, you are next.”

He wants to look at Ren and say, “Take your Force religion and shove it up your arse.”

If everyone had listened to him a little bit more, if they had hurt him a little bit less, he wouldn’t have the urge to fight back. He feels every bit the rabid dog Snoke loved to call him behind his back. It’s like throwing his father’s old belongings onto a burning pile, possibly even better. It’s freedom, in its purest form. 

“I knew it!” Poe says. 

“No, you did not,” Finn says. 

Things are alright. 

He’s falling. The ground welcomes him like an old friend, his head hits something and the world slowly turns black.

“We found the spy.” 

He’s not dead. He’s not dead because the pain is everywhere. Pain means he’s alive, he’s somewhere, he can’t see, he can’t move, the pain takes up his entire brain. There’s sensation on his back, his head is rested against the solid wall behind him. They must’ve dumped him here; old furniture to be disassembled later. 

Pryde words echo through his mind and repeat in an endless cycle until they blur into something inaudible. Armitage slides down the wall, head rolling to the side and his shaky breath mimicking his racing heartbeat. He’s losing blood, so much blood, how is he surviving this? Little Armie, never strong enough to get up after his father hit him, not strong enough to carry a simple tray with food, foolish enough to keep a video Poe sent him to cheer him up. That’s what gave him away. Armitage wants to laugh but it comes out as a sob. 

Not that he expected his death to be heroic. He expected nothing. He never expected anything good to happen to him. How dare Poe giving him hope, how dare the resistance turning into a straw he could breathe through while Ren repeatedly pushed his head underwater?

His comm vibrates with a message, not even coded this time. Her voice is filled with panic, she’s almost screaming, yet her words reach him like he’s wearing ear-defenders. 

_ “Hux. Hux, what happened?” _

Armitage can’t keep his eyes open. Pryde happened. Non-confrontational, always stoic, calm Pryde. He can’t even blame him. 

_ “Armitage?” _ Phasma asks through the comm. It’s almost like she’s with him. He smiles. 

He wakes up in space, in the arms of a person that keeps talking to him in a voice so soft that it could be his mother. Armitage has a very faint memory of how his birth mother looked like, and when he opens his eyes, he sees her in the face of whoever’s lap he’s currently staining with blood. He presses his fingers to the wound, sending new pain through his body. 

“Mum?” he hears is own distorted voice. 

It makes the person chuckle and the illusion fade. Armitage stares up into face of possibly the least person he’d expect. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the girl, Rey, says and puts her hand on Armitage’s. Blood seeps through their fingers, staining her fingernails. She smells like Ren, his scent is all over her. It makes Armitage sick. He has no reason to trust the Force. 

“You can take a look if you want,” the scavenger-girl suggests. How is she smiling? 

Armitage is many things and curious is one of them. He pushes his head up and keeps it upright despite the pain. Rey has closed her eyes, her breath is calm and steady. 

He almost misses the tingling in his chest, the stream of light pulling away the pain and replacing it with warmth. The gaping hole in his chest is being replaced by new layers of pale, soft skin. No scars. 

Armitage feels it coming in time, so he frees himself from her embrace, turns around and spits out whatever he had for lunch today. The sour taste in his mouth makes it worse, and after a few seconds, he finds himself shaking and crying and almost collapsing onto the floor. He feels Rey’s hand on his back but she doesn’t say anything to comfort him. They clean up the mess in silence, only interrupted by the occasional shaking of the ship. The  _ Falcon  _ looks like she has been loved dearly many, many decades ago, and now she’s held together by nostalgia and an occasional porg nest in the walls. 

“Poe?” Armitage asks once he trusts his voice again. Part of him doesn’t want anyone else to see him like this. Every other inch of his body needs to see that the man survived. 

“Right here,” a voice calls, there are footsteps, then Poe’s face, and it’s enough to make him cry again. Poe exchanges a look with Rey, Armitage can see it through the tears, but he kneels down next to Armitage and starts rubbing his shoulder. Rey sprints towards what Armitage suspects to be the pilot seat. He can hear her and Finn whispering about the ship having taken damage. 

“Hey now,” Poe says, overwriting the voices from the cockpit. “You’re a hero.”

Except that he’s not. Armitage makes a sound that’s barely human. 

Poe opens his mouth to say more but he will never reveal it to Armitage because the ship suddenly hits the surface of whatever planet they were heading too. 

Finn has the audacity to yell, “Sorry!”. It brings little comfort. Poe wraps his arm around Armitage’s shoulders and presses him closer to him. Even in the middle of a ship crashing, Armitage feels like their touch is inappropriate. It effectively shields him from cracking his head open, which is something not even Rey’s Force magic could fix. They slide across a field for a bit until the ship finally stop. 

“Another happy landing!” Poe calls out. Armitage starts giggling like this is the funniest joke he has heard in his life. Two near death experiences within ours have ruined him beyond repair, apparently. Poe squeezes his shoulder and joins his laughter. It’s so surreal that Armitage might as well enjoy it. He rests his head on Poe’s shoulder, inhales his scent and takes his time to breathe. 

Armitage has to admit that he has expected the resistance trio to act a little more harmonic around each other. Their fight ends rather ugly, and when Armitage manages to follow the group to the shore where the ruins of the Death Star can be seen in the distance, Poe already turned around angrily and marches towards the ship again. Armitage locks eyes with Rey for a second. Her face remembers him of Ren during his worst moment. 

He decides that he doesn’t want to get involved in whatever this is. He walks back, slowly, the sound of waves crashing against the Death Star parts in his back. He could've sworn that he hears the familiar screaming of a TIE-fighter right before he can reach the sad remains of the  _ Falcon _ . Armitage doesn't dare to look up but he only feels safe when he can hide inside the ship. He curls up to a little ball in the corner and tries to contact Phasma. It takes her a few seconds to respond, then her face lights up in front of him. 

_ “ARMITAGE HUX, WHAT IN THE STARS DID YOU DO?” _

“I became a spy for the resistance, we talked about this,” Armitage says. 

_ “That was not what I meant. What happened?” _

“Pryde found out-” Armitage starts. 

_ “Oh.” _

“And he shot me.”

She doesn’t even answer this, Armitage just gets a holographic eye roll. 

“I’m safe here,” he says because that’s what she wants to hear. Phasma takes her time with her response. It’s almost like he can see right through the image her comm projects of him. 

_ “I can’t tell you where I am,” _ she says.  _ “Obviously. You know where to go.” _

He didn’t, until now. It takes a look at her damp hair, the way the blond curls cling to her face. They don’t say much after that, she suggests him to rest and he tells her to find a blow dryer. He hangs up before she can think of a response. 

Armitage is too weak to walk out of the ship again, too weak to even attempt to help repairing the  _ Falcon _ . He watches Finn and the girl who introduced herself as Jannah having a deep conversation about their past as stormtroopers. Finn speaks with excitement and anger in his voice. He never understood the First Order like Armitage did. Or, and Armitage almost vomits again when that thought manifests inside his brain, Finn understood the corruptive nature of the First Order way before Armitage did. Finn, Jannah, all deserted troopers discovered first that no matter Armitage’s high hopes and ambitions, the First Order is a perfect, if not more gruesome copy of the Empire. Armitage has repeated every mistake his father made. What happened to the boy that witnessed the explosions on Phasma’s planet, swearing to protect her and to never, ever let himself become a monster like Brendol?

_ This, obviously _ , he thinks and lets his head fall against the wall. 

“You can’t die on us,” Finn says. “We still need you.”

“I’m not dying.”

“You can starve to death too,” Jannah suggests. 

Armitage raises an eyebrow and crawls closer to them. He remembers her, he remembers every single trooper. Phasma does too but her reasons are a little… different. She wanted to know everyone who could possibly betray her (no surprise to Armitage after the whole Cardinal incident), he wanted to be better than his father. In a way, they are both selfish. 

“I’m sorry, how am I the odd one in this? Have you seen the food you wanted to serve me?”

“Finn ate it too,” Jannah says. “And he lived.”

“Maybe you only poisoned mine.”

“And we’re back to the part where we need you,” Finn mutters. “How the hell are you still alive?”

“Spite.”

They can’t argue with that. 

Armitage keeps up the act until they’re done with their work, then he allows them to picnic next to him. Finn is nice enough to pretend to ignore that Armitage steals about half of their food. The problem is that it’s good. The texture is scary but the taste makes up for it. Even the seaweed, no, especially the seaweed. It crunches when Armitage bites on it. He shouldn’t enjoy it as much as he does but when Jannah bursts into laughter, he grins at her. 

“There’s something on your teeth,” she says. 

“I don’t think I’m legally allowed to have dignity anymore,” Armitage replies, causing her to giggle again. That’s what he enjoyed most when teaching. Making students laugh. Maybe he wasn’t destined to lead the galaxy after all. 

“Still doing okay?” Poe asks when he sits down next to Armitage. It almost embarrasses him that he has slept through whatever went down on the wreck with Rey. Finn, soaking with seawater from head to toe, told them that Rey battled Ren and then left with his TIE-fighter. Armitage hasn’t stopped shaking ever since he learnt that Ren is most likely still on the moon. They’re now preparing to reach the resistance base as quickly as possible. Whatever he’ll find there won’t be as scary as having Ren know that Armitage… what, defected? He didn’t do it voluntarily, Rey made that decision for him. Still, Ren wouldn’t care for that. 

“He’s here. I know he is,” Armitage says, avoiding to look Poe in the eyes. The man lets out a noise close to a scoff but less mean. 

“I never thought you’d be scared of him.”

Neither did Armitage. 

“I wasn’t always afraid of him,” he says. “I don’t know when it happened.”

“Do you know when you changed your mind about joining us?” Poe asks. 

He has spoken to Poe before. They have seen each other, parsecs of space between them and closer than Armitage has ever been with a man. Still, it feels like it’s the first time he sees Poe and takes everything in. This is the man he expected to know about his mother. It’s the man he ordered to kill multiple times. The voice drawing him out of the First Order. His only hope on a bad day. 

It’s all the same person. The worst thing is that Armitage dares to relax around him. He feels safe. 

“Yes,” Armitage says. “I think I do.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“No.”

Poe leans closer and rests his head on Armitage’s shoulder. 

“Good to have you, Hugs. Now, let’s get off this planet and show Ren the middle finger while we leave him here alone, shall we?”

“You are a terrible person,” Armitage says. 

But he still whispers, “fucking cunt” while they fly over the old Death Star. Maybe he imagines it but he sees a lonely figure climbing around on the metal. It’s petty but he hopes that Ren slips and drowns. 

“Jokes aside, I want you to remember something.” Poe turns his head until he’s staring right into Armitage’s eyes. “You saved us.”

“I saved myself,” Armitage replies and smiles a smile he usually saves for Phasma. “You just happened to be nearby.”

He isn’t sure that they are going to win. He isn’t even sure if he is safe yet. There will be consequences for his actions, he will have to explain himself to many people. He doesn’t support everything the resistance does. He doesn’t see himself in the bigger picture, yet. 

Armitage leans against Poe again and breathes him in until the fears are an insignificant little ball in his chest. Maybe Armitage makes the first step. Maybe it’s Poe. They’re kissing while the stars shoot past them; Armitage’s hands are in Poe’s hair and Poe is holding his shoulders like he expects him to break apart any moment. 

“Your stupid video got me shot,” Armitage whispers between the kisses. “I hope you’re not sorry.”

“I will play it to you every morning,” Poe promises and Armitage wholeheartedly believes him. It doesn’t sound like a bad future at all. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Later.**

“Can I drop you off somewhere?” Rey asks. Armitage looks up when she squeezes herself next to him. It’s like she managed to flood the ship with sand. Tattooine is almost as bad as he remembers Jakku. They bonded over that, a little. Growing up on a dune planet (the same dune planet!) is an experience that you can’t forget easily. When Rey mutters curses under her breath while trying to get sand out of her boots, Armitage can feel it too. 

“Uh, yes actually,” he says. “Please drop me off on Arkanis.”

“A little rainy, isn’t it?”

“A little rainy,” he agrees and when she laughs, he chuckles too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand that's it! Sorry I kept you waiting. I already apologize for any mistakes in advance, I'm not a native speaker and I had 3 cups of coffee today. I don't know how I can still type. I was yesterday years old when I was informed that Germans call coffee "caf" too but spell it "Kaff". The more you know.  
> I hope you enjoyed this, I might do a spin off, who knows. Certainly not me.   
> \- ben


End file.
